How Much Money Are You Losing From Enquiries You Already Have?

The leads are coming in. So why aren't more of them becoming customers?

Most businesses spend a lot of time and money trying to generate new enquiries. Google Ads, Facebook, social media, websites, referrals and other marketing methods can all help bring potential customers through the door, but getting the enquiry is only the beginning.

What happens after someone actually gets in touch can be just as important. A potential customer fills in your contact form, sends an email or makes an enquiry, and someone intends to get back to them. Then another job comes in, the phone starts ringing, something needs dealing with and suddenly that enquiry has been pushed further down the list. A few days later, it has been forgotten completely.

The problem is that the customer hasn't necessarily gone away. They may still want your service, but if they haven't heard from you, they will quite understandably start looking elsewhere.

The problem isn't always a lack of leads

It's easy to assume that the answer to slow business is simply to generate more enquiries. More leads must mean more customers, right? Not necessarily.

If you're already receiving a steady stream of enquiries but only a percentage turn into actual work, there could be a problem further down the process. Enquiries might not be followed up consistently, quotes might be sent without anyone checking whether the customer is ready to proceed, or older opportunities might simply disappear into an inbox.

This becomes even more difficult when several people are dealing with customers. Without a clear system, it can be difficult to know who has contacted a customer, whether a quote has been sent, when someone needs following up or which enquiries are still worth pursuing.

You could be paying for advertising to generate those enquiries, only to lose potential customers because there was no clear process for dealing with them.

Every enquiry should have a next step

A good customer pipeline gives every enquiry somewhere to go. Instead of having potential customers spread across emails, spreadsheets, notes and people's memories, you have a clear view of where each opportunity currently stands.

An enquiry might start as a new lead, move to contacted, then to quote sent, followed by a scheduled follow-up and finally a booked job. The exact process will depend on your business, but the principle is the same: you should always know what is happening with your potential customers and what needs to happen next.

This also means that older enquiries don't simply disappear. If someone wasn't ready to book when you first spoke to them, that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't going to become a customer. Having the right system in place means you can follow up at the appropriate time instead of relying on someone to remember.

That's where Digitall Solution comes in

Digitall Solution helps service businesses organise the journey between someone saying "I'm interested" and becoming a paying customer.

We build a customer pipeline around the way your business actually operates, giving you a much clearer picture of your enquiries and the opportunities sitting in front of you. When a new enquiry comes in, it has somewhere to go and a process to follow, rather than simply becoming another email that can eventually get buried.

The aim isn't to give you another complicated system that creates more work. It's about making the process of dealing with potential customers clearer, more consistent and easier to manage, so you can spend less time trying to remember who needs contacting and more time actually winning the work.

You may not need more leads

Before spending more money trying to generate another hundred enquiries, it is worth looking at what is already happening with the enquiries you receive.

If you're regularly getting potential customers but too many disappear before becoming jobs, the answer may not be more marketing. You may simply need a better process for turning the opportunities you already have into customers.

Because getting more enquiries doesn't help much if you're still losing customers in the gaps between the first enquiry and the final sale.